Dalits Media Watch
News Updates 07.03.14
SC/ST, street vendors law comes into force- Hindustan Times
Dalit forums to seek promise from parties- The Hindu
PoA Act: Court Judgments Reinforce Public Perception- The New Indian Express
Woman sentenced to 1-year imprisonment- The Hindu
Hindustan Times
SC/ST, street vendors law comes into force
Barely a month before the Lok Sabha polls, the UPA has notified two key laws — to empower India’s Dalit population and give about 10 million street vendors legal protection.
The amendment to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 and the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Bill — came into force fromThursday. They are among a slew of laws that was notified by the government in a hurry before the code of conduct kicked in.
In the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, several new offences committed against Dalits including imposing social or economic boycott on SC/STs, obstructing use of common property resources, forcible tonsuring of head and garlanding with footwear have been made criminal offences. These acts though widespread are not covered currently in the existing law.
The Dalits are seen as a crucial votebank for political parties across the spectrum. According to Census 2011, SC & ST’s comprise 24 % of India’s total population.
The other law that came into force from Thursday — the Street Vendors bill mandates municipalities to set up restriction free vending zones/ night bazaars where hawkers can sell their wares without being harassed by the authorities.
Presently, there is no law to regulate and safeguard the interest of urban street vendors in India.
The Hindu
Dalit forums to seek promise from parties
: Enthused by the passage of the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Bill 2013 recently in Parliament certain Dalit forums have decided to extract promises from the mainstream political parties, ahead of the general elections, to commit themselves to the implementation of the SC/ST sub-plan.
V.Ramesh Nathan, general secretary of the National Dalit Movement for Justice told The Hindu that his organization along with the Social Awareness Society for Youths and the National Coalition for Strengthening SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act had succeeded in getting the Act amended after three years of strenuous efforts.
On behalf of these organizations he thanked the National Advisory Council chairperson Sonia Gandhi in this regard. “The Bill has added certain acts as new offences such as dedicating SC/ST women as devadasis to a temples, garlanding any member(s) of those communities with footwear, compelling them to dispose of or carry human or animal carcasses or do manual scavenging, forcing them to vote for a particular candidate or impeding their voting rights and so on,” Mr Ramesh Nathan said.
The Bill also provides for setting up of an exclusive court for speedy trails of offences relating to atrocities and appointment of separate public prosecutors to argue those cases.
These courts would have to act within a timeline of disposing of the cases within two months and in case of appeal to the High Court these ought to be disposed of within three months.
SUB-PLAN
However, owing to the imbroglio over the Telengana issue Parliament could not pass the Bill on the SC/ST sub-plan, which was in a way disappointing to these organizations. However, Mr Ramesh Nathan categorically said that they would prevail upon the mainstream politicians to give assurance on the implementation of the sub-plan.
He noted that under the sub-plan the State governments mandated to allocate funds in proportion to the SC/ST population. It was meant to improve the socio-economic condition of these communities and to bridge the societal divide.
Stop giving freebies
He called upon the State government to stop distributing freebies such as dhotis and saris to the SC/ST people and instead allocate the mandated funds for their overall development.
The New Indian Express
PoA Act: Court Judgments Reinforce Public Perception
Even as the conviction rate in cases of atrocities against members of Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) community remains poor, the public perception is that a good majority of these cases are false.
Unfortunately, some court verdicts and interpretations of the SC/ST PoA act directly or indirectly helped to reinforce this public view, legal experts and rights activists said.
In a verdict in March, 2013, a division bench of Kerala High Court comprising justice T R Ramachandran Nair and justice A V Ramakrishna Pillai ruled that no person can be convicted for atrocities against members of scheduled castes or tribes unless it was proved that the offence was committed with caste prejudice.
With this observation, the court scrapped the charges under SC/ST PoA Act against two hostel employees who were accused of raping a 12-year-old tribal girl.
Though the court upheld a lower court verdict on charges of rape, it ruled that there was “nothing on record to show that the crime was perpetrated by both the accused for the sole reason that the victim belonged to Scheduled Tribe community.” “Some verdicts and interpretations of law are disturbing,” said Justice P N Vijayakumar, Chairman, State SC/ST Commission. For example, a court in a recent verdict in a rape case, pronounced that the PoA Act does not apply as the perpetrators were not aware that she was a Dalit when they assaulted her.
“Yes, to some extent the bias exists in judiciary too, for the simple reason that they have not come from outer space,” said Dr Anand Teltumbde, eminent scholar, rights activist and author. Caste bias is an all-pervasive virus and it affects all unknowingly to various degrees. Many a court judgement could be cited, he said.
“Even in Khairlanji, the lower court played strategically to the political needs of the time in awarding 2 death sentences and 6 lifers although the case was fairly buggered up by the prosecution. This keeps happening. It is not in the PoA Act or for dalits alone, the judiciary’s bias surfaces in all matters dealing with the lower classes,” said Dr Teltumbde, who authored ‘Khairlanji: A Strange And Bitter Crop,’ on the infamous rape and murder of a dalit family in Khairlanji, Maharashtra, the State SC/ST commissioner, however points fingers at the system and the society. “The courts take decisions on the basis of evidences and witness accounts. Who would appear as witness for these poor people? Our society has not fully wiped out the remnants of casteism,” he said.
By the time a case reaches the judiciary, it gets corrupted, says Teltumbde.
“The bias permeates through all strata. The police, the most. The investigation deliberately spoils the case.
The judicial bias can be corrected at the higher court but if the case is spoiled in the investigation itself, nothing can be done later,” said Teltumbde. According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 99 rape cases were reported in SC/ST category alone in the state in 2012 and trial in 49 cases were completed. Out of this, only two cases resulted in conviction, and all the accused in 47 cases were acquitted or discharged.
And worse, Kerala recorded the highest rate of rape (15.81) of the tribal women in the entire country in 2012. One out of every 15 tribal females was raped. It also reported the highest rate of crime against tribes (25.6 pc) as against the national average (5.7 pc) in the year.
The Hindu
Woman sentenced to 1-year imprisonment
Adilabad Special SC, ST Court Judge N. Raj Kumar on Thursday sentenced Pudari Sathamma to one year imprisonment for damaging the crop of a SC woman and abusing her in caste name. According to the prosecution, Sathamma had forcibly entered the victim’s field on July 1, 2011 and damaged the crop besides verbally abusing her.
News Monitor by Girish Pant
.Arun Khote
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of “Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC”)
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of “Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC”)
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